For guitar legend, it's still bad to be Thorogood

Friday

Mar 15, 2013 at 2:00 AM

His songs evoke images of sticky bar surfaces, last calls and pickups who look better after you've had a few. The man behind the power blues guitar was named one of the most influential men of the state of Delaware in 2012, but only because he left it.

Deborah Medenbach

His songs evoke images of sticky bar surfaces, last calls and pickups who look better after you've had a few. The man behind the power blues guitar was named one of the most influential men of the state of Delaware in 2012, but only because he left it.

George Thorogood & the Destroyers return to Ulster Performing Arts Center on Saturday after a two-decade absence to be their "b-b-b-b-bad to the bone" selves and rock the house.

"Delaware was a very conservative place," Thorogood remembers, describing his teen years as the middle child of a suburban existence that promised little edge. "I wasn't comfortable there and they weren't comfortable with me. I was asked, 'Do you want to wear long hair and go to Greenwich Village and read poetry?' and I said 'Yes! Yes, I do!' I wasn't into Guy Lombardo. I was into Bob Dylan."

Thorogood taught himself to play guitar and, once it was certain a professional baseball career was not in his future, moved to Boston.

"I was picking up my style from everybody," Thorogood said, taking a cue from friend Joe Bonamassa to watch other players and learn from the best, who included John Hammond, Elmore James, Howlin' Wolf and John Lee Hooker. By the mid-1970s, Thorogood and drummer Jeff Simon and bass player Billy Blough could have been playing $150 bar gigs until they grayed, but fate stepped in with a chance to be a supporting act for the Rolling Stones' 1981 U.S. tour. Thorogood switched record companies to EMI America and released his top hit "Bad to the Bone," which is still widely used in film and television. His beat-driven covers of John Lee Hooker's "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" and Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love?" are better known than the originals.

Sixteen albums later, Thorogood is still pushing the envelope with new albums in process, following the example of other musicians he admires. "Look at the things Dylan has done," Thorogood said. "He's like a scientist. He finds new waters to explore and may run adrift, but he never stops." Being so close to Dylan's old home turf in Woodstock, don't be surprised if you spot history-buff Thorogood crossing Tinker Street if he can break away. Otherwise, he invites you to join the party at UPAC and see what riffs he tears out of his pale Gibson.